What word, Minogue wondered. Am I to keep the troops in line with orders from on high? Is she blind to the fact her husband is beyond this stuff?
"I'll have a word with him. Yes, I will, Kathleen."
"And if he's not willing to get up at a decent hour and do a day's studying…"
"I'll see to it," Minogue whispered. Kathleen picked up on his awkwardness. Daithi's repeat exams were coming up in two weeks. If he failed these ones, he'd have to repeat his final year. That was bad enough in itself. What Minogue and Kathleen most feared was that Daithi wouldn't have the interest to do the year again if he failed this time around. She looked at him. He did not want to leave her this morning with an acid remark hanging in the air behind him. She kissed him.
CHAPTER 3
James Kenyon walked out from Cadogan Gardens onto a Monday morning Sloane Street. He walked briskly, ignoring the noise of traffic. Kenyon crossed with the lights at Pont Street and within ten minutes he was passing the Chelsea Holiday Inn. Hyde Park Barracks filled up the junction ahead, where Sloane Street met with Brompton Road and Knightsbridge.
Kenyon glanced at his reflection as he strode by the glass-and-chrome fashion shapes. Cecil Gee's wanted four hundred quid for a two-piece suit that looked like something a client would willingly leave behind in a Neapolitan knocking shop? He took note of his own preoccupied face sliding along the windows, a face which usually said forties, not fifty-three this September. The mannequins in the windows repelled him. They looked tough and cutting, determined survivors, the grimly handsome of Maggie's shopkeeper Britain.
Kenyon had not met Alistair Murray in person, but Murray's slight Scottish burr over the telephone had irritated him. Maybe it was the air of unctuous assurance he heard in Murray's voice. He had noted some faint condescension, as though Murray were using his rank while he tried to soothe Kenyon. Kenyon didn't want soothing; he wanted facts. Murray had slipped up. Kenyon had to find out how much, and quickly.